Kitty's House of Horrors kn-7 Page 19

  The smell of blood from Conrad’s wound was overpowering. This sent a blaze of warning to the Wolf side—that much blood was like a beacon to predators saying we were hurt, vulnerable, easy pickings—

  But human hunters wouldn’t be able to smell it. We had a little time. Settle down.

  I’d brought my cell phone but still didn’t get reception. Probably another ten to twenty miles before we’d get close. We couldn’t haul Conrad that far, and if we didn’t get him stationary and hydrated, he’d die of blood loss before that. The lodge was maybe three miles away. We could defend ourselves better there than we could in the open.

  “We have to go back,” I said.

  Conrad looked up, focused a moment. So he was lucid and paying attention. Good. “Do we have to?”

  “We can’t stay in the open,” I said.

  “We’re safer with the others,” Tina said. Conrad nodded. Maybe he was ready to be a team player. “Should we try to wash his leg off in the lake?”

  I shook my head. “Stuff’s not clean enough. We’ll use bottled water at the lodge.” Be optimistic—we’d get back just fine. “Conrad, you ready?”

  He made a sound, half sob, half chuckle. “No. But that’s okay.”

  “That’s the spirit,” I said. Tina and I gathered ourselves, hoisted Conrad over our shoulders, and set off.

  We made more noise than I was comfortable with, pushing around shrubs, shuffling through debris on the forest floor. Conrad couldn’t stay quiet, and I couldn’t force him to. He was doing well, considering. I tried to turn my hearing outward, searching for sounds and smells of approaching danger, and couldn’t sense anything. I couldn’t let it get to me. Just had to press forward. We’d take a break outside the lodge; I’d scout for Cabe and Provost and get in touch with the others.

  Progress was slow. It would take us a couple of hours at least. We had to keep stopping to rearrange our grip on Conrad, to let him rest. Tina and I were both dripping sweat, despite the cool air. We had only just reached the edge of the lake when the hairs on my neck started prickling. Like fur, like hackles rising. The undeniable sense of being followed. Of walking into danger.

  I pulled the others to a stop and waved her to silence when Tina started to speak. Conrad’s head lolled; he’d been drifting in and out of consciousness. I propped them both against a tree and took a few steps away, to get a taste of air that didn’t have so much blood, sweat, and fear in it.

  A hint of breeze gave me a scent that bowled me over. I crouched, nose up, taking it in, trying to figure out what it meant. This was wild. Musk wild, without a hint of human to it. Wolf whined; my hands clenched.

  The smell of blood had attracted predators.

  A wolf stepped out of the trees in front of me. Tail stiff, head down, amber eyes glaring. Earthen gray and brown fur, standing on end. Lip curled, showing teeth.

  And all I could think was, he looked so small. Because he wasn’t a lycanthrope.

  I knelt, face-to-face with a natural, wild wolf.

  Chapter 18

  Montana had wild wolves. I knew that. I just hadn’t thought about it. I hadn’t thought that I would ever encounter one.

  Make that five. Four more came into view, another one ahead, the others to each side of me. Two females, two more males. I could smell them, the differences—I recognized the scents, even though it seemed so wrong. They were various shades of brown and gray, pale on their bellies, tails tipped with black. They smelled like a pack. Like a family. But not mine.

  I had never seen wolves in the wild before. I hadn’t even seen one in a zoo since I’d become a lycanthrope. Zoo smells of musk and far too many creatures crammed into too small a space were more than my sensitive nose could handle. Kind of like this. So wild, and so alien. I almost howled for real, because I could feel the need to Change, Wolf writhing within me. Face wolves as a wolf, it was the only way. But I breathed slow, hugged myself, pulled the need inside.

  “Kitty,” Tina whispered. She’d spotted them, too.

  I held my hand out, stopping her. “You two, stay up. Stay standing, stay tall, tall as you can.”

  Real, wild wolves. They seemed agitated—and who could blame them, with the recent explosion and all sorts of crazies tromping through their territory. They were looking at me. Circling me, studying me. I could read it—the body language was the same. The wary stance, hackles straight up, this waiting to see what I would do. The readiness to defend themselves. They weren’t sure if we were prey or something else. They waited for me to reply.

  My eyes were wide, my heart racing—I felt like prey, and they were sizing me up. But I didn’t know what to do.

  Yes, you do, the lupine voice within me whispered. Look away, don’t stare at them, lower your head, slouch. Tell them you aren’t a threat. On all fours now, I did that. Turned my shoulder to them. Held my back as if I had a lowered tail. Kept my gaze down. I whispered to Tina, “Don’t look at them. Look down.”

  To a predator, a stare was a challenge. I didn’t stare. I couldn’t see what Tina was doing. Not panicking, I hoped.

  I put myself between Tina, Conrad, and the wolves. They’d smelled blood—injured prey. They were just following instincts. They’d try to get around Tina and me and get to Conrad. If we were deer, that was what they’d do. I let Wolf seep into my being, as much as I could without shifting, until the world wavered to gray wolf-sight, and I smelled my own fur. Maybe they would smell it, too, and not think us so different than them. With every hair of Wolf’s being, I tried to tell them, We don’t want trouble, we’re not invading. Just passing through. But you can’t have the sick one, he’s ours, our pack. Mine. Let us pass. No trouble here.

  We were invaders. They’d have every right to attack. But maybe this was just odd enough that they’d pass us by.

  The larger male, the one I’d first seen, stood front and center, watching me. The others had broken their stances, were padding back and forth, noses to ground, tails out like rudders. Waiting for the alpha male’s signal. The leader stayed still. One of the females sidled up to him, bumped him, licked his chin. I could almost hear her saying to him, This is too strange, not worth the trouble, let’s leave.

  His mate. An old married couple working it out. God, I wanted to see Ben so badly.

  I met the big male’s gaze once, then lowered my face again. If that didn’t offer him peace and ask him for safe passage, nothing would. He wasn’t moving, and I knew what that meant.

  “We have to leave,” I said, slowly rising to my feet and joining the others. “He won’t turn his back on us, so we need to be the ones to move.”

  “But what if they come after us?” Tina’s voice was taut; she was right on the edge.

  “They won’t,” I said.

  “You can’t actually talk to them, can you?”

  I sort of could. I let her draw her own conclusion.

  With Conrad over our shoulders again, we moved off, as quickly as we could, into the trees and back toward the lodge. I glanced over my shoulder once; the wolves were watching us, the male in the center of them all. But he was sitting now, his fur flat, relaxed almost. Not getting ready to run and launch an attack. One of them flopped to her side and started licking a paw. They weren’t going to come after us. But this was definitely their space.

  My nerves were tingling. Tina kept asking questions—“What was that? What the hell happened there?”—and I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t talk.

  “Kitty!” she finally said, almost a shriek, and I looked at her. Her eyes widened in fear. I don’t know what face I showed her, but it probably wasn’t quite human. Something wolfish glared in my eyes.

  I closed my eyes, shook my head, breathed slow. Told Wolf to settle.

  We’re in danger.

  I know.

  Must flee.

  It’s not that simple.

  We kept moving.

  Chapter 19

  We rested three more times. Conrad had fallen unconscious by the time we reached
the clearing in front of the lodge. There, we stopped again. The house and everything around it looked quiet. I wanted to know what was going on before we moved any closer.

  The shadows had changed, growing more washed-out, more surreal. The sky had paled—close to sunrise. Dawn had sneaked up on me. When was the last time I’d slept? After I’d shifted yesterday? I couldn’t remember how long ago that had been. The gray predawn sky didn’t improve the hazy fuzz I seemed to be moving through.

  “I’m going to go to the house to find Grant,” I said, leaving Tina and Conrad sitting at the edge of the clearing in front of the lodge. Not much cover here. I moved along the edge, slow and watchful, taking deep breaths. Nothing smelled out of the ordinary. I didn’t dare call out to Grant, in case an enemy was close by and listening.

  I felt like I had a target painted on my forehead. I scratched it, then felt like an idiot for doing so.

  I’d reached the porch railing when Grant cracked the door and stepped outside. He’d been keeping watch.

  “Kitty.”

  I didn’t know where to start. “We’ve got Conrad. He’s hurt, badly.”

  “I heard what sounded like an explosion—did you find the blind?”

  I swallowed, a gulp of air, of courage. “We did. It was booby-trapped. We lost Lee.”

  He nodded and followed me out to where Tina waited with Conrad. The three of us brought him inside and lay him on one of the sofas. Tina and I collapsed. Grant handed us bottles of water, then looked at Conrad’s wounds.

  The big picture window in the living room was growing light enough to see by. I sat up.

  “Where are Anastasia and Gemma? It’s almost daylight.”

  “They’re not back yet,” Grant said.

  Shit. “Should we go look for them? Have you gotten any word back from them?”

  Now Tina was sitting up, frowning, worried. “Jeffrey—”

  I scrambled up, no longer bone tired. An adrenaline-fueled second wind pushed me. “We have to go look for them.”

  Nodding at Conrad, Grant said, “Tina, can you look after him?”

  “I want to go, I want to help find him—”

  “Someone has to stay here,” Grant said. “If we lose the lodge to the hunters, we’ve lost everything.”

  She nodded and sat, clasping her hands. Her hair was limp, in need of a wash, pushed behind her ears. Her shirt and jeans were streaked with dirt and blood—Conrad’s blood was all over both of us. Dark circles shadowed her eyes. I wondered if I looked that wrung out.

  “We’ll find him,” I said, trying to sound hopeful. Had to stay hopeful.

  Grant and I went outside. At the edge of the porch, I tipped my nose up and tested the air. I smelled the forest, the outdoors, like I always did, but I wanted to smell people. Vampires. Their cold, undead blood should have stood out among all this life.

  “Find anything?” Grant asked me.

  “Not yet.” I stepped forward, all my senses firing.

  I heard running. Not caring about stealth, someone crashed through the trees toward us.

  “Someone’s coming. Jeffrey,” I said as he broke out of the trees and joined us in the clearing.

  “Thank God,” he said, gasping to catch his breath. He was sweat soaked. No telling how long he’d been running. “They’ve trapped Gemma, we need you.”

  Jeffrey led us back the way he’d come, about a mile through the woods around the lodge, to the edge of the meadow. He explained on the way, as well as he could around the hard breathing. We were all running on adrenaline by this point.

  “We found the blind, a camouflaged tent full of equipment and weapons. We broke up as much of it as we could, scattered the ammunition, hid the weapons in the underbrush. There were silver bullets, silver arrows, stakes, crosses, bottles of what we think were holy water. And a cage. No sign of Cabe or Provost.

  “We were on our way back to the lodge when something—it was like an explosion. Too loud for a gunshot. It—it was a harpoon. I can’t think of how else to describe it. It was automated. Anastasia said there wasn’t anybody around, she would have sensed them if they were. But it got Gemma. It was a harpoon on a line and it dragged her into this… this cage.” He was half jogging, half limping now, holding his side. His face twisted in pain. He’d better not have a heart attack on us.

  He said, “They could have just staked her, but they didn’t. They waited, and they triggered this… this thing. This trap.”

  We arrived and saw what he meant. Gemma was trapped in a cage, just tall enough to stand up in, just wide enough to grip both sides with her hands. Sheltered out of sight by a tree, it was portable, maybe set here only in the last day or so the way the grass under it was recently crushed. Steel and heavy, it would hold lions. A winch welded to the back had reeled in Gemma, who struggled against a harpoon sticking out of her right shoulder. The whole thing could have been automated, set on a trigger, operated by remote—we’d seen that the hunters had cameras and monitors set up. They could have moved their base since Grant interrogated Valenti. But as Jeffrey had said, they could have staked her just as easily as trapping her with harmless—to her—steel. This trap had a different purpose.

  The cage was at the edge of the open meadow, and sunrise had begun. A band of full sunlight crept toward us across the grass.

  Anastasia was talking Gemma down. Gemma herself gritted her teeth and threw herself against the barbed spike in her shoulder.

  “Gemma, darling, stay calm. Don’t struggle. Don’t thrash.”

  The younger vampire closed her eyes and settled, nodding in agreement.

  Anastasia reached through the cage and held the spike, where it protruded from her back. “We’ll work it out of you. Carefully, now.”

  Gemma eased herself forward, leaning against the spike, rolling her shoulder a little, struggling against the barb. Anastasia braced it still. I heard the wet, meaty sound of ripping flesh.

  Vampires felt pain. I’d seen them get hurt. But they didn’t bleed much, and they didn’t need to breathe unless they were speaking. Gemma slid herself off that hook and didn’t make a sound. When she was free, she fell forward, and Anastasia dropped the spike, where it dangled off the winch.

  Anastasia glared at Grant. “Every magician is also an escape artist, yes? You can pick the lock?” She pointed to the door of the cage.

  Grant was already kneeling before the lock, working on it with a couple of thin metal tools, his lock picks.

  Gemma leaned forward, pressing herself against the bars of the cage, leaning toward Anastasia, reaching. Anastasia held the younger woman’s face.

  “Ani, I don’t want to die,” she said, gasping now in instinctive panic. She was still more human than not, had spent more years as a human than as a vampire.

  “Hush,” Anastasia said. “Stay calm. When he opens the door, we must fly to safety, do you understand?” Gemma nodded quickly. Her face puckered and she started crying.

  I had never seen the sun rise so quickly.

  “Anastasia, go back to the lodge,” Grant said, never turning his concentration from the lock.

  “No, not without Gemma, I’m not leaving.”

  “You’re in danger,” he said. “Go back.”

  “No!”

  “I’ll save her. I’ll get her out. But I can’t worry about you both.”

  “Gemma—”

  The girl was sobbing.

  I said to Anastasia, “Some of the stories say you guys can turn to mist. You can vanish, reappear at will—”

  “We can’t just walk through walls and iron bars!” the elder vampire said. “She’s just a child!”

  “Anastasia, please,” Jeffrey said, putting his arm around her shoulder, urging her away.

  “Jeffrey,” I said. “Go back to the lodge, the hunters’ blind, whatever’s closer. Get a tarp or a blanket or something we can put over the cage to shade it,” I said. I’d started crying, too. I’d have thought I’d be out of tears by now. “Both of you, go!”
>
  Anastasia turned and ran, Jeffrey following, struggling to keep up. I moved around the cage, putting myself between Gemma and the sun, as if my small body could shelter her.

  Grant worked on the locks. He clenched his jaw and seemed to be struggling.

  “Grant?”

  “This type of lock would be easy, but there’s a film of silicone sealant on the mechanism. It’s glued shut.”

  Gemma pressed her back against the bars, as far away from the oncoming sunlight as she could get. Watching, I could almost see it move toward her, a reaching hand. Grant continued jamming his pick in the lock, working it in an arcane fashion that might as well have been magic.

  With a pop and a click, the lock sprang and the door swung open. Grant took hold of Gemma’s arms and pulled.

  And the sunlight reached her.

  “No!” Grant screamed in fierce defiance and clung to Gemma all the more.

  But the light touched her legs and she caught fire, and the flames raced up her as if she were made of dry cotton. Her clothing didn’t burn so fast but stayed for a moment as a shell around an inferno. Her eyes held terror, her gaze locked with Grant’s, her mouth open in a silent wail.

  Then the fire was gone and all was ash, specks drifting above on heated air. Grant knelt before streaks of soot and ash on the ground, his hands rigid in front of him, his skin burned to blisters.

  The smell in the air was… I breathed through my mouth and tried to shut it out.

  I moved to Grant, put my hand on his shoulder. The expression on his face was lost, the eyes sad. He looked old.

  “I had her,” he murmured. “I’d opened the lock. I’d won.”

  I wasn’t sure he’d even noticed his hands. He hadn’t moved them. They still curled as if they held Gemma’s arm.

  “You’re hurt,” I said. “Let’s get inside.”

  He slumped against me, and I almost panicked, thinking I’d have to drag him back, thinking he’d die, too, and then what would I do?

  “I’m so tired,” he said, leaning on my shoulder. Just resting a moment.